_Concluding Remarks on the Malay Islands._--This completes our sketch of the great Malay islands, the seat of the typical Malayan fauna. It has been shown that the peculiarities presented by the individual islands may be all {390} sufficiently well explained by a very simple and comparatively unimportant series of geographical changes, combined with a limited amount of change of climate towards the northern tropic. Beginning in late Miocene times when the deposits on the south coast of Java were upraised, we suppose a general elevation of the whole of the extremely shallow seas uniting what are now Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines with the Asiatic continent, and forming that extended equatorial area in which the typical Malayan fauna was developed. After a long period of stability, giving ample time for the specialisation of so many peculiar types, the Philippines were first separated; then at a considerably later period Java; a little later Sumatra and Borneo; and finally the islands south of Singapore to Banca and Biliton. This one simple series of elevations and subsidences, combined with the changes of climate already referred to, and such local elevations and depressions as must undoubtedly have occurred, appears sufficient to have brought about the curious, and at first sight puzzling, relations, of the faunas of Java and the Philippines, as compared with those of the larger islands. We will now pass on to the consideration of two other groups which offer features of special interest, and which will complete our illustrative survey of recent continental islands. * * * * * {391} CHAPTER XVIII JAPAN AND FORMOSA Japan, its Position and Physical Features--Zoological Features of Japan--Mammalia--Birds--Birds Common to Great Britain and Japan--Birds Peculiar to Japan--Japan Birds Recurring in Distant Areas--Formosa--Physical Features of Formosa--Animal Life of Formosa--Mammalia--Land-birds Peculiar to Formosa--Formosan Birds Recurring in India or Malaya--Comparison of Faunas of Hainan, Formosa, and Japan--General Remarks on Recent Continental Islands. JAPAN.